Waiting for a Love That Will Not Break my Heart
I read tall, teetering stacks of parenting books when I was pregnant with my first. Not one told me how much it would hurt. Oh, sure, they talked about childbirth. The pain of it. I read a lot about that, and I was prepared. Well, as prepared as you can ever be. But not one of those books prepared me for the pain of loving. To love a...
A Song For Your Monday: Gungor’s “The Fall”
Today, I have a song for you instead of a poem. It isn't that I had no time for reading this weekend. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday tucked up close to a window, book in hand, enjoying the cool breeze. It's only that I played Gungor's just-released album as background music, but the story this album tells refuses to stay in the...
Book of Quotations: Home
I keep a book of quotations. It looks exactly like any other journal, but it’s for a different kind of journaling. Journaling with the words of other writers, if you will. Here I scribble down quotations from all kinds of books: poetry, theology, memoir, literary theory, fiction, you name it. I write down anything I want to remember. ...
Bless Her Heart
I can still hear my paternal grandmother: “Bless her heart,” she would say. It was one of those Southern-isms that fascinated me as a kid. I may have been growing up in Texas, but my own San Francisco-born mother never said, “Bless her heart.” She never said, “over yonder” or “back forty.” Neither did she serve biscuits every morning or...
A Poem for Your Monday
This comes from one of my favorite poets, the Irish writer Eavan Boland. Reading it again this morning, I remember that myths are some of the truest stories we tell. The myth of Persephone is not merely a way of explaining the change of seasons before our age of scientific discovery. More than this, it is a story of loss and restoration. ...
In Praise of Weakness
She leaned forward, looked right into my eyes, and said, “You’re a good mother, aren’t you?” Yes, she really did. My jaw dropped a little, and I said nothing but “Ummm." Then I watched those inarticulate sounds hang there in the air between us. Fortunately, she was a talker, and she barreled right ahead, “Well, of course you are, but my own...